THE world of higher education may have relatively few perks but at least they are timely. The thought may have crossed the minds of education minister Baroness Blackstone and Higher Education Funding Council chief Brian Fender as they took off for balmy India late last week while Britain was battening down the hatches in the face of the worst storms since the 1987 Great Gale. Their mission: to sell British education and training. And with Monday's temperature in New Delhi, one of the stopovers, a comfortable 180C (cf Newcastle on 30C) they were guaranteed to avoid the cold s(p)ell.